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C'mon and get me you twist of fate
I'm standing right here Mr. Destiny
If you want to talk well then I'll relate
If you don't so what cause you don't scare me

8742 +/- 7 points. If you take the factorial of pi, and divide it by the percentage of people dropping out of the market, and add the rate at which people are buying precious metals you get 8742 with one standard deviation of 7 points.

It is so simple.

A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools. -Douglas Adams

8742 +/- 7 points. If you take the factorial of pi, and divide it by the percentage of people dropping out of the market, and add the rate at which people are buying precious metals you get 8742 with one standard deviation of 7 points.

It is so simple.

Well, the reason that your number is different from mine is that you forget to account for climate change. If you cube the average change in temps over the last ten years and divide by 7 (the number of deadly sins), then multiply it by your number, you come up with my number.

8742 +/- 7 points. If you take the factorial of pi, and divide it by the percentage of people dropping out of the market, and add the rate at which people are buying precious metals you get 8742 with one standard deviation of 7 points.

It is so simple.

I'm quite a bit more optimistic and think we'll be back up about 1000 points higher than that at 9742 +/- 7 pints. Mine was based on the factorial of pie, divided by the the percentage of people shopping out of Whole Foods Market adding the rate at which people are becoming precociously mental resulting in 9742 with one Cyburbian deviant of 7 pints

“Death comes when memories of the past exceed the vision for the future.”

Remember this motto to live by: "Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO- HOO what a ride!'"

Waiting on hold forever (something I shouldn't be doing on Yom Kippur) to cash out one of my deferred comp accounts. I need the money for a pending move; apartment deposits and whatnot. It's losing hundreds every day, and since I got laid off there's been no contributions, so I have no choice.

Dow on October 29: 7250
Average national price for a gallon of gas then: $2.40

I don't think this won't be a depression, but it will be a 1970s-style recession, with near double-digit unemployment.

Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell. -- Edward Abbey

I would say below 7,000, dragged down by fears overseas and a stock market crash here sometime in late 2008 early 2009. An election may restore some degree of confidence (but not as much as predicted earlier this year). However, it will take a while for the new administration to get settled.

It will take the rest of 2009 for the stock market to slowly stablize. However, it will take a few years for the DOW/NASDEQ/NYSE to reach its pre-2007 increases (now with a higher degree of regulation). Unfortunately, it will be very difficult for investors to recoup their losses.

I partly agree with Dan's view on double-digit unemployment. There are billions (if not trillions) of dollars waiting on the sidelines in un-tapped capital. However, lending is non-existent right now (I heard something along these lines at the Illinois Municipal League conference in Chicago a few weeks ago). As the market improves and banks start lending money, this will release more capital back into the economy.

I also predict the SEC will dissolve into the Federal Reserve (Cox even admitted it a week or two ago). Unfortunately, derivatives will be highly regulated either under the Federal Reserve or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, something Greenspan, Rubin, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle fought agressively against during the bull market in the 1990s.